Who owns which domain? How to find out

If you want to find out who owns a website, the first place to start is the imprint. There you will usually find at least the contact details and the name of the operator. However, if you do not find what you are looking for there, there are other ways to find out who owns a domain.

Find out the domain owner - this is how it works

In the imprint you will usually find the contact details and the name of the operator of a website, as this information is legally binding. In addition to the imprint, you can also query the operator data in special cases via a so-called Whois request. You address this to the official registries of the domains. For domains ending in .de, for example, the "Deutsches Network Information Center eG" (DENIC) is responsible.

• Until May 25, 2018, the operator data for domains was publicly accessible. Displayed were, for example, the contact details of the owner or those of the administrative contact. With the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this is no longer possible or only extremely limited.
• In special cases, authorities or holders of name and trademark rights can make a justified request to view the owner data of a domain.

Which data is publicly listed?

Some data, however, can still be viewed. What exactly these are, is determined by the respective awarding body. Often, data such as the registrar, an email address for contacting, the name server as well as the registration, update and expiration dates of the domain can still be viewed publicly.